from the fighting-back dept

Microsoft has announced that its challenge against a National Security Letter (NSL) has finally been unsealed after the FBI dropped the request. If you're not familiar with them, the NSL is a process by which the FBI can basically demand a company hand over just about anything, by claiming its a matter of national security. As we've discussed, National Security Letters -- which come with built in gag orders -- are very rarely challenged. Two years ago, we noted that despite 50,000 NSLs, many of them later determined to be abusive, there had been only four challenges and the FBI simply dropped the requests on two of them.

Since then, it seems clear that there has been an uptick in companies challenging though they're still hidden by the gag orders. Microsoft specifically challenged that gag order, leading the FBI to withdraw its letter. But, that also means that the FBI doesn't get in any trouble at all for abusing the NSL process and fishing for information. Already, one court has found those letters unconstitutional, but that decision has been stayed while it goes through the lengthy appeals process. In the meantime, the FBI gets to keep fishing. It's good to see Microsoft challenging them, but this story could just as easily be "FBI gets away with yet another fishing expedition."

from the no,-but-you-guys-should-totally-do-it dept

Vice President Joe Biden is in China and as usual, he took the opportunity to try to insert his foot in his mouth. China may be veering towards its own brand of capitalism simply because it's a manufacturing powerhouse, but it's still a long way from being an open country in any other respect.

“Innovation can only occur when you can breathe free, challenge the government, challenge your teachers, challenge religious leaders.”

All well and good, I suppose. Of course, it's much easier said than done, and Biden's contribution only included the "saying" part. These sort of challenges have actual repercussions in China, which still wishes unruly citizens into high-walled political cornfields prisons.

But what's even more irritating about his blithe statement is the fact that his own administration isn't really keen on being challenged by its citizens.

Case in point: the NSA leaks. For a long time, the administration stood firm in its support of the agency. It only stepped back when it realized the situation was going to get a whole lot worse before it got any better and that the NSA itself wasn't just lying to the public, but to the president and the rest of the government as well. It also smelled blood in the water after amendments and bills targeting the NSA and its programs began gathering bipartisan support and wanted to be as far away from the massacre on the horizon.

This administration has also prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other administrations combined. This is what happens to people who challenge the administration. They end up broken by the system, the same system that tells them it wants to be "open" and "transparent."

The administration has also shown a fondness for shutting out inquiring minds with the overuse of state secret exceptions. Sure, information may want to be free, but its overseers won't let it roam without being covered in black ink. Its track record on civil liberties has eclipsed the awfulness of the Bush administration, which at least had the courtesy to be openly evil in its intentions.

Now, I realize that as vice president, Biden doesn't truly represent the administration. He may be second-in-command, but the reality of the job demands someone who can stay out of the way while whipping up support for the administration's policies and pet legislation behind the scenes. It requires him to make appearances on behalf of the administration but kindly asks him not to embarrass it while doing so. Biden has failed to hold up his end of the bargain with his statements.

Here he hands Chinese citizens advice they can't possibly use while simultaneously highlighting the hypocrisy inherent in the administration's treatment of criticism. "Challenge your government," he tells people who can be ripped from their families for doing so before retreating to the safety of an administration that actively seeks out and punishes those who challenge its methods and actions. With this mindless bit of "go team!" posturing, Joe Biden is hurling stones from the balcony of the administration's glass house.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Solving really tough problems is a more collaborative process than it used to be. Luckily, it's getting easier for a wide variety of people to come together and work on these difficult challenges. Here are a few prizes looking for creative people to produce some really cool solutions.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are a lot of online contests, sponsored by all sorts of organizations (usually non-profits). Some of the contests are challenging, and others are just a little strange. Here are some examples that caught our eye.

from the it's-amazing-what-people-can-do dept

By now, you've probably heard that a team from MIT won the DARPA balloon challenge, whereby DARPA put 10 red balloons in the air around the country and wanted to see what people could do to find all 10 balloons. The rules were pretty loose, and the team at MIT took all of nine hours or so to locate all ten balloons, through an interesting "crowdsourcing" method. They basically quickly set themselves up as a clearinghouse of information, and made it easily shareable across different social networking platforms, and employed something of an affiliate program to encourage people to get their friends to sign up with the MIT team as well. If you signed up people who helped find the balloons, you got some of the prize money according to your friend network, and so on down through the social pyramid. The team claims that what was most important was the recursive nature of the pyramid, which gave people incentive to participate, even if they knew they couldn't find the balloons.

While some other DARPA challenges, like the autonomous vehicle challenge (to get a totally driverless vehicle to drive a few hundred miles with no help), are cool but seem limited in terms of application outside of the core area it was built for, this one actually does seem to hold a lot of useful lessons that can be picked up on right away, and which can be applied across a lot of different business, policy, IT, public good and many other areas. Some of the key elements:

Recognize that there's power in numbers: Recognize that for certain projects, you need a lot of different minds (and eyes) working on things, and that certain tasks shouldn't just be done by "the one best" individual.

Make it easy for more people to participate: Once you realize that you need a lot of people, you need to make it easy for them to participate.

Give people multiple reasons to participate: Different people have different motivations. Some people just want to belong to a successful project or a leading team to bask in the glow. Others need additional types of incentive. The MIT team offered up monetary compensation in addition to recognition for participation.

Give people a reason to get others involved: Sort of a corollary to recognizing the power in numbers, the MIT team worked hard to give people incentive not just to participate and to promote their participation, but also to recruit others to the team as well. This even made it so those who couldn't help finding the balloons directly could still participate in better finding the people who could find the balloons.

Align incentives properly: Make sure that everyone is driving towards the same goal, and that the incentives work on top of one another to all push towards that same goal.

Look beyond your immediate "group": One of the coolest things I thought about the MIT group was that there was nothing in there that limited it to MIT or the folks at MIT. They immediately recognized that it made the most sense to reach out to folks beyond their immediate circle, which is what helped them get the people they needed involved quickly.

Now, a lot of these may sound obvious, but it's often important to remind yourself of these basic concepts, and it's impressive to see how well (and how fast) these worked in the case of the MIT balloon team. I could see these lessons being applied in a lot of other areas as well. There is a separate issue that the team hasn't discussed yet, but promises to eventually: which is that it also had to deal with a number of bogus entries -- including at least some from a competing team trying to throw the MIT team off the scent. Finding out how they got around such problems would also be quite interesting in terms of better managing these sorts of group efforts.

from the taking-them-down,-one-by-one dept

The EFF's patent busting project continues, as it's filed a challenge against an online music patent held by a company named Seer Systems. The challenge includes plenty of prior art, including some published by the patent holder in a book, long before the patent application was actually filed. It's great to see the EFF continue to try to mow down these patents one by one, but it's worth noting how slow and cumbersome this process has been. The EFF first announced its patent busting project more than four years ago. And, while the program has had successes, it's been very slow going. If it takes this long to bust such obviously bad patents, just think of the trouble dealing with ones that aren't quite as obviously bad.